Consciously Live According To Your Values and Principles
Personal Values define your character and are
critical keys to Living A Determined
Life.
As we wrote previously on Living Up To Personal Values, the actions and decisions of people who are in tune with their core
personal values usually fall within their own comfort zones, mostly because of
the alignment of their actions and decisions with their personal values.
This is why those who are in close touch with
their own personal values tend not to have major catastrophes and calamities in
their lives, at least not until they engage in actions or activities that are
not congruent with their personal values.
A core aspect of your personal values are your
principles. Principles are the foundation for a meaningful and worthwhile life.
A person who has principles and displays these will
be respected and liked by the people most important in their life. More
important, such a person will be respected and liked by himself or herself as
well.
There will be times in your life when you are
called upon to stand up for your principles, especially if you have principles
based on your core personal values.
These moments need not be major, life-defining
incidents. Rather, they often crop up during mundane day-to-day activities.
When you take action in accordance with your principles, often called living up
to your principles, the glow of self satisfaction can be immense and is reward
enough in itself.
However, when you do not act in harmony with
your principles, a little piece of you dies inside and your soul becomes
uncomfortable and agitated.
A lot of the literature we read and the stories
we hear while growing up feature characters struggling or learning to formulate
their principles and act accordingly. One common lesson in most of these
stories is that principles are not situational, something many people forget
when becoming adults and entering "the real world."
Principles are the rocks upon which your
decisions for action should be made. Your principles help ensure that you live
up to your personal values, and thus need to be solidly entrenched in your
psyche and persona. As Edward R. Lyman wrote:
Principle ─ particularly
moral principle ─ can never be a weathervane, spinning around this way and that
with the shifting winds of expediency. Moral principle is a compass forever
fixed and forever true.
Today
is a good day to pause and reflect upon your principles. How would you list and
define your principles? How do you want to live in tune with these in the
coming year? How can you use these to make better decisions in your personal
and professional life?
And
most important: how are you ensuring that you consciously live according to your values and
principles?
This article is partially excerpted from the book Project You: Living A Determined Life, available in eBook and paperback at Amazon.
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